Who should not share? The merits of withholding unused vehicles

Roman Zakharenko

Working Papers from Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow

Abstract: People repeatedly demand travel, using available vehicles scattered around space. What can justify vehicle withholding (i.e. preventing others from using it, for own future use) from the social welfare perspective? This paper investigates heterogeneity in the potential cost of search for alternative vehicles as such justification. It is shown that travellers whose search cost is substantially higher than that of others (e.g. limited-mobility people) can optimally withhold a vehicle. The heterogeneity of search costs should be sufficiently strong, e.g. a uniform distribution is not variable enough to justify withholding by anyone. In an example calibrated for car use in London, it is shown that at most 39% of car users should withhold their vehicles under the most extreme modelling assumptions, while all others should share.

Keywords: Vehicle sharing; Transportation demand; Spatial search frictions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 L92 O18 R40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gla:glaewp:2024_07

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